John Cooper’s home coaching debut was a success. He was happy for the guys that made it that way.

The Miami University men’s basketball team set a single-game school record with 22 steals and used a 27-point run to bury Grambling State in the second half Tuesday night, posting an 80-54 victory before a crowd of 1,708 at Millett Hall.

“This is not whatsoever about me,” Cooper said. “Here’s why I want our guys to be successful. I want them to be successful so that they have the opportunity to play in an environment and understand what it’s like when people are in this arena and to play for championships because it’s a special time. If you’ve never experienced that, you miss out.

“I want them to put out the kind of effort to where our fans understand and say, ‘Hey, we need to go watch them because of the way they play.’ And it’ll happen. It starts by establishing home-court advantage.”

The RedHawks (1-1) took care of this one with five players scoring in double digits: Reggie Johnson (20), Will Felder (12), Jon Harris (12), Allen Roberts (12) and Bill Edwards (11).

The hosts shot poorly early and trailed 37-29 with 16:00 remaining. Less than seven minutes later, their full-court pressure defense and suddenly hot hands had forged a 56-37 lead.

“We didn’t hang our heads at all,” said junior guard Quinten Rollins, who tied a school record with seven steals while totaling five points and seven assists. “We just kept saying, ‘Fight.’ We ended up getting some solid traps. We wanted to stay with our game plan, and that was ball pressure and make tough plays.

“We’re going to rely on our defense the whole season. We’ve got to be a scrappy team.”

MU shot 32.3 percent from the field in the opening half and 52.9 percent thereafter. The Tigers (0-3) committed 32 turnovers.

“You try to get teams a little bit uncomfortable if you can,” Cooper said. “As the game got into the second half, I noticed at times their guards were bringing it up and looking for the trap to come, and whether or not we’re going to trap, they’re never sure. So instead of racing the ball up the court, they’re almost hesitant to bring it up. That’s what you want to do.”

Terry Rose tallied 20 points for Grambling. He marked the first 11 points of the second half, but didn’t score again.

“Tonight was very, very difficult for us,” Grambling coach Joseph Price said. “I thought our kids fought hard for three-fourths of the game. We were very, very careless with the ball, and Miami just had such a tremendous press and talent and speed and quickness. We’ve got a lot of players that need to gain more confidence.”

Miami travels to Louisville on Sunday afternoon.